Behold the Dreamers(24)
“Ugh,” the instructor said. “Totally forgot about Mother’s Day. I should call my mom and do something nice for her, right?”
“And you wife,” Fatou said.
“I’m not married.”
“Girlfriend?”
Neni kicked Fatou’s leg under the table.
“Boyfriend,” the instructor said.
“Boyfriend?” the women asked in unison.
The instructor laughed. “I take it you ladies don’t know many men with boyfriends?”
Fatou shook her head. Neni’s mouth remained ajar.
“I don’t know no gay man from my country,” Fatou said. “But my village we used to got one man who walk lika woman. He hang his hand for air and shake his derrière very nice when he dance.”
“That’s funny.”
“Everybody say he musto be woman inside, but nobody call him gay because he got a wife and childrens. And we no got no word for gay. So, I am happy to meet you!”
“But I thought you said you like children, Professor,” Neni said, the shock still apparent in her voice.
“Oh, I love children.”
“But how can you … I thought …”
“I’ve always wanted kids. As soon as I’m done with school, my boyfriend and I, we really hope we can adopt.”
“Take one of my childrens,” Fatou said, giggling. “I got seven.”
“Seven!”
Fatou nodded.
“Wow.”
“Yes, me, too, I say the same thing every day. Wow, I got seven childrens? Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, mon Dieu!”
“How many do you want?” Neni asked the instructor.
“One or two,” he said, “but definitely not seven.”
Fatou and the instructor laughed together, but Neni couldn’t find a way to get past her confusion. How could he be gay? Why was he gay? I can’t believe he’s gay, she said to Fatou over and over as they walked toward the subway with their sons.
“Oh, no, you no musto tell me,” Fatou said. “I see you face when he say it.”
“It’s just that—”
“Just that you like tall Porto Rican boy with long hair. I see for you eyes how you like him.”
“Why does everybody who looks Hispanic have to be Puerto Rican to you?”
“He like you, you like him.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t like him.”
“What you mean, you don’t like him? I see how you look at him when I enter café. You laugh at everything he say, ha, ha, ha, too funny. Ah, oui, Professeur; vraiment, Professeur.”
“I did not say anything like that!”
“Then why you lie?”
“Lie about what?”
“Why you no tell Jende you gonno meet professeur inside café?”
“I already told you. I don’t want him to worry.”
“Worry for what?”
“Worry about the things men worry about when their wife has a rendezvous on a Sunday afternoon with a young professor. If you were him, would you like it?”
“I no worry if Ousmane gonno meet anybody … but what if Liomi tell him?”
“I told Liomi to say I went to study, which is true. What is the difference between me telling Jende I’m going to study versus I’m going to meet my professor to help me with my schoolwork? It all has to do with my school.”
“Aha,” Fatou said as they descended the stairs to the downtown D train.
“Aha, what?”
“That be the same reason why my cousin husband beat her one day back home.”
“Because she went to meet with her professor?”
“No, no,” Fatou said, shaking her head and wagging her index finger at Neni. “Because she do what you just do. Husband think she somewhere, then he pass somewhere different and see her drinking beer with other man. Husband drag her back to house and beat her well. He say, why you gonno disgrace me, lie to me, and then go sit drink beer with other man? She say, oh, no, he just my friend, but husband say, then why you lie to me?”
“So what did your cousin do?”
“What she gonno do? She do stupid thing, husband beat her. That all. She learn lesson, marriage continue, everybody happy.”
Thirteen
THOUGH HE LOVED NEW YORK CITY, EVERY WINTER HE TOLD HIMSELF HE was going to leave it for another American city as soon as he got his papers. The city was great, but why spend four months of the year shivering like a wet chicken? Why go around wearing layers upon layers of clothing like the madmen and -women who roamed the streets of New Town, Limbe? If Bubakar hadn’t cautioned him that it was best he remained in the city (it might complicate matters if they tried to move his case to another jurisdiction, the lawyer had said), Jende would have been long gone, because there was no reason why a man should willfully spend so many days of his life in a cold, costly, congested place. His friends, Arkamo in Phoenix and Sapeur in Houston, agreed with him. They begged him to move to their warm, inexpensive cities. You come over here, Arkamo told him, and you’ll taste real American enjoyment. Life in Houston, Sapeur said, is sweeter than sugarcane juice. At least half a dozen times every winter, they told him he would forget all about that worwor New York the moment he arrived at their city’s airport and strolled on its clean streets and moved around freely in February without a winter jacket. So convincing were they that on the coldest days of the winter, he and Neni Googled Phoenix and Houston to learn more about the cities. They looked at the pictures Arkamo and Sapeur sent of their spacious houses and gargantuan SUVs and, try as he might, Jende found it impossible to not envy them. These boys, and others he knew in those cities, came from Limbe around the same time as him. They made the same kind of money he made (or less, working as certified nursing assistants or stockroom associates at department stores), and yet they were buying houses—three-bedroom ranch-style houses; four-bedroom townhouses with backyards where their children played and where they hosted Fourth of July barbecues teeming with grilled corn and soya. Arkamo told Jende how easy it was to get a mortgage these days, and promised that as soon as Jende was ready, he would connect him with a loan officer who could get him a zero-down-payment mortgage on a sweet mini-mansion. It all sounded wonderful to Jende (one of the many things that made America a truly great country), but he knew such an option wouldn’t be available to him without papers. Arkamo and Sapeur already had papers—Arkamo through a sister who became a citizen and filed for him; Sapeur through marrying an American single mother he met when he showed up at a nightclub dressed in a three-piece orange suit and red fedora. They could afford to get high-interest loans that would take thirty or more years to pay off because they were green card holders. Jende would buy a nice house in one of those cities, too, if he had papers. As soon as he could, he would move, most likely to Phoenix, where Arkamo lived in a gated community. There would be no more freezing days for him; no more mornings of vapor spewing out of his open mouth as if he were a kettle of boiling water. Neni had her dreams of a condo in Yonkers or New Rochelle because she didn’t want to leave her friends, and she loved New York too much, cold or warm, but he knew he would leave behind the city and its hopeless predicaments if he weren’t stuck in an immigration purgatory.